Author(s):
NeedMost PhD-granting mathematics departments provide Professional Development for Teaching (PDT) to Graduate student Teaching Assistants (GTAs). In order to sustain and improve these programs, departments and administrators need to be able to assess program effectiveness and establish assessment cycles. Evaluation of GTA PDT has been limited. This project aims to mitigate this lack of resources by producing a flexible and user-friendly assessment protocol, designed and tested by mathematics departments.Program Assessment Conference for Mathematics (PAC-Math) (NSF #2306211) will help math departments maintain their own standards of excellence for their programs and can manage their own assessment. At this time, no professional communities (e.g., MAA/AMS) hold math departments accountable for what these programs should look like. To hold autonomy healthily at a departmental level, self-evaluation is key. Sustainable programs are ones who can narrate their own verifiable stories of impact and improvement. This project utilized the mechanism of distributed leadership (DL), which abandons the heroism of an individual leader and capitalizes on participants’ expertise. There is little research about how DL looks in the context of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC). Because the PAC-Math conference replicated the DL model in the context of a NIC, we aim to provide more nuanced descriptions of the DL anatomy. Guiding Questions1. How does distributed leadership (DL) interplay with a Networked Improvement Community (NIC)?2. How can resources support healthy assessment cycles for departmental programs for Professional Development for Teaching (PDT) for Graduate student Teaching Assistants (GTAs)? OutcomesIn October 2023, the Program Assessment Conference for Mathematics (PAC-Math) (NSF #2306211) brought together mathematics professional development practitioners, evaluation professionals, and higher education administrators to develop a flexible protocol for mathematics departments to use for self-evaluations of their Professional Development for Teaching (PDT) programs for graduate student teaching assistants (GTAs). This poster will share more details about the PAC-Math protocol, which will be piloted at institutions soon, and other deliverables from the 2023 conference. This poster will also show some of the observed outcomes of the DL model. One participant wrote, “The distributed leadership model does two big things: (1) increases engagement. More people are more actively involved in more sessions. There was very little lecture and instead lots of active learning! (2) it provides ample opportunity to meet other people at the conference and learn from their experiences.”Broader ImpactsPAC-Math (Program Assessment Conference in Mathematics, DUE# 2036211) aims to improve program assessment practices for PDT programs for GTAs in mathematics. This will (a) improve the experience for undergraduate students taking mathematics classes, and (b) improve the teaching skills in mathematics graduate students, many of whom become future faculty members. PAC-Math is potentially transformative because this protocol will empower math departments to self-assess programs, reflecting their unique goals. PAC-Math has the potential to improve educator development in many higher education settings. By empowering academic departments to self-evaluate their professional development programs, cycles of self-assessment will support program sustainability and excellence.
Coauthors
Emily Braley, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; Jack Bookman, Duke University, Durham, NC
